Speeches by Shanks.

“We carefully considered this. This was a proposal that was put forward without consultation with Government from Ming Yang. We welcome investment from China, as we have announced in the past few months, when it is in the national interest. When the Prime Minister was in Beijing, we have seen a lot of inward investment …”

“I think it has. It will have been felt on bills, but not as often as it should be.”

“We are investing significant amounts in building the system of the future, so there often are costs that come down on bills that are matched by investments that we have to make, particularly on grid, so that we can keep the system as resilient as it is. If you take an average of the price cap in 2025 to 2024 in real te…”

“I am not going to get drawn on the national security advice, which we have seen and considered. It has been carefully considered across Government. I am not going to get into the specifics, but we took very careful consideration before we reached the decision.”

“I have been working with the Treasury and with the Exchequer Secretary, who joined me for the last roundtable I had with industry a few weeks ago. We are aware of the need to move quickly. I would recognise the point that, at this moment in particular, we should underscore how important the four remaining refineries th…”

“Good evening. It is good to be with you again, Chair, on this really important subject. On refineries, I brought all of them together for the first time in 13 years to have conversations about what the future of the refining sector would look like. We are working on a future of fuel strategy. A consultation has gone ou…”

“We absolutely should be moving as fast as possible on everything, but there is a particular case to be made for bringing more flex on faster. We announced this week that we would start a trial of being able to utilise so-called “wasted” wind—the wind that we currently pay to turn off in areas of high constraints—so tha…”

“The tax income we have received for 60 years from North sea oil has funded public services for a long time. I am not going to suggest that the revenue is not hugely important. It is. The question that we have been answering about what the future of the North sea looks like is: how do we manage what is a super-mature ba…”

“It is a timely question. I was at Hunterston B, the nuclear power station in Ayrshire, last week, which has just been handed back to the Government for decommissioning, because we are taking a different approach to how we will decommission our nuclear assets to be as efficient, cost-efficient and fast as possible, but …”

“The first thing to say is that the Chancellor outlined yesterday, and repeated the message that the Prime Minister gave at the Liaison Committee, that the Government are working day and night at the moment on what support for billpayers might look like. As I said last time I gave evidence, there is an observation perio…”

“We learn from those situations. Ofgem has a role in making sure the market is as resilient as possible, and looking at individual companies as part of that. Ofgem has introduced higher capital requirements on companies to demonstrate that they are more resilient than they might otherwise have been. There is a lot more …”

“These are the kinds of things that we have been monitoring very closely. We take it very seriously. There is no point in me saying anything other than that this has been a huge disruption to global supply chains. The IEA has said that it is the biggest disruption there has ever been. Of course, this is a serious moment…”

“We are absolutely not. That is not from a point of us not taking very seriously the risks that there are at the moment and managing the situation carefully, but we are monitoring it. All the data that we have is that, because we have a strong and diverse range of supplies, we are not concerned about it. It does not mea…”

“You are right. There are consequences from what is happening in the middle east that will be felt around the world. There are probably a number of these things that will follow through over a number of weeks. We are hoping that it will de-escalate soon, and you are absolutely right to say that there will be impacts fro…”

“I am sure you have a suggestion for me, Torcuil, of where that might be, and you and I certainly stood on a very windy hilltop a few weeks ago in Stornoway. As for the way we are doing this, it will be a pilot. The Government will put £20 million into that pilot to look at the final levies that people pay on the megawa…”

“We review these documents regularly, as you would expect, not just given the events happening at the moment. These documents are reviewed regularly. Just because it has not been updated, no one should read anything into that.”

“I would say that, first of all, the Government were taking seriously our resilience before this situation. This brings very sharp focus to a lot of the work that we were doing, and a lot of the assumptions that we have made as a country for some time, but the work was going on before that. Our national resilience and t…”

“It is a really important framing of the question. The Prime Minister was really clear with all of his Ministers before this crisis, in fact, that the sense of fear and dread that many people have that the next letter coming through the letterbox is a bill that they cannot afford should be uppermost in every single one …”

“The tax income we have received for 60 years from North sea oil has funded public services for a long time. I am not going to suggest that the revenue is not hugely important. It is. The question that we have been answering about what the future of the North sea looks like is: how do we manage what is a super-mature ba…”

“These are the kinds of things that we have been monitoring very closely. We take it very seriously. There is no point in me saying anything other than that this has been a huge disruption to global supply chains. The IEA has said that it is the biggest disruption there has ever been. Of course, this is a serious moment…”